My name is Fred and I am a gay conservative living in Ottawa. This blog supports limited government, the right of the State of Israel to live in peace and security, and tries to expose the threat to us all from cultural relativism, post-modernism, and radical Islam.
I am also the founder of the Free Thinking Film Society in Ottawa (www.freethinkingfilms.com)

Thursday, July 08, 2010

Would-be Al-Qaeda terrorists convicted in the UK....

The three men Ibrahim Savant, 29, Arafat Waheed Khan, 29, Waheed Zaman, 26, made vitriolic suicide videos in which they blamed the West for their actions and claimed there was no such thing as innocent victims of their attacks.

They were seen meeting with the central figures of the plot and entering the bomb factory in Walthamstow, East London to make their videos during a six week surveillance operation by police and MI5.

Communications intercepted by GCHQ helped reveal that a British al-Qaeda lieutenant called Rashid Rauf - who was also involved in the July 7, July 21 and Manchester shopping centre plots - was behind the attacks.

Peter Wright QC, prosecuting, said the three men were the “front line troops” with a “willingness to participate in the deployment of suicide bombers as part of a deadly and co-ordinated campaign against the general public.”

Two juries at Woolwich Crown Court in South East London failed to reach verdicts on the central charge of conspiracy to murder and acquitted the men of knowing about the airlines plot itself.

The men had claimed they were persuaded to make the videos as part of a protest video by the leader of the plot Abdulla Ahmed Ali.

But yesterday they were unanimously convicted of conspiracy to murder at the end of a third trial, four years after their arrest.

The verdicts bring to 11 the number convicted as a result of the investigation, codenamed Operation Overt.

Sue Hemming, head of the CPS counterterrorism division, said "These men were involved in a calculated and sophisticated plot to create a terrorist event of major proportions.”

Khan and Savant were school friends of Ali and the three young men played football together and joined the Islamic Medical Association, a charity in East London that helped Ali travel to Pakistan where he linked up with al-Qaeda.

The suicide attacks would have been worse than the attacks of September 11 and could have killed up to 10,000 people.

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My name is Fred and I am a gay conservative living in Ottawa. This blog supports limited government, the right of the State of Israel to live in peace and security, and tries to expose the threat to us all from cultural relativism, post-modernism, and radical Islam.
I am also the founder of the Free Thinking Film Society in Ottawa (www.freethinkingfilms.com)